Tag: travel

I’ve decided to start doing some personal photography projects, so you may see posts like this every now and then here. I’ll still do the regular travel posts as well 🙂

So far, my favorite town along the California coast has been Santa Barbara. When I came back to Southern California to get out of the heat wave in Utah, I went back to Santa Barbara. Well, actually, I thought I’d give Los Angeles another try, and I lasted about 16 hours there before heading out.

Santa Barbara has a couple nice beaches. One of them is called Hendry’s Beach. I’d just gotten a new camera and some new (but actually really old) lenses. I wanted to test them out – particularly to test focusing manually with the new camera and lesnes. I found good subject matter for this on the beach and decided to make a little personal photo project out of it.

On part of Hendry’s Beach, dogs are allowed off-leash. It’s essentially a dog park and beach combined. The dogs love it here. They run around, splash and play in the water, socialize, and play lots and lots of fetch.

I shot a whole bunch of photos of the dogs out there, over about 7 different days. My daily routine looked something like this:

7am – wake up. Drive over to the beach (about 1 mile from the area I’d sleep in)

8am – have breakfast

9am – make coffee (Lattes made with real Espresso!)

10am – meander out to the beach. Take pictures of some of the dogs there. Alternate the photo shooting with sitting around on the beach, a times practicing Spanish words that I’m learning and have written in a notebook that I bring along.

11am – back to hang out in the van

Rest of the day – repeat cycles of walking around on the beach, taking dog pictures, sitting down on the beach and practicing Spanish, going back to the van to eat, sort the pictures, etc.

The pictures:

Yes, that is a WOLF. I initially thought it was a coyote, but it’s a puppy wolf.

It’s a pet, or… is sort of. A guy brought it to the beach most days and one day I talked to him about the wolf. It’s just a puppy and has another 100lbs to grow. The guy said that he’s taking it to a sanctuary in Hawaii and is waiting for the quarantine period to end before flying it out. I asked how he came to have the dog, and he said he breeds them. I don’t understand why he’d breed a dog and then take it to a sanctuary, but I didn’t want to keep asking a lot more questions.

The wolf was nice to all the other dogs, and was very submissive. When some people tried to pet it, it was shy and backed away. It had no interest in fetching. It just ran around the beach, went in the water, and socialized with dogs.

Last we left off, I was just getting into Colorado a the end of June. I went to Grand Junction and was trying to get my bearings on where I should go in Colorado. I got some maps, and a book, and was about to start looking and planning. I called my dad for input. He’s been around a lot of parts of Colorado. He gave me some input on where to go and then said “you should just come out to Denver and come along with me to Tennessee. I’m leaving in a week.” So, how about a little side trip to the east?

Why Go?

I’ve been to a lot of parts of the U.S., but I haven’t spent much time in the southeast. I’ve seen how cheap houses can be in the there – like $80k for a decent-looking house that’s too big for me – and I’d been wanting to see if I thought I might like to live there some day.

As I was building my van, I assumed I’d venture out through the southeast. But I’ve gotten to enjoy moving slowly, and the idea of driving my van all the way out there hasn’t seemed too exciting. But now I had a free ride. My dad was going out there to spend time in the northeast part of Tennessee to check if he’d like to move there. My brother and his girlfriend were already out just a few hours from there, near the middle of North Carolina, looking for a house to buy. My Brother in law and nephew would be coming out as well. My Aunt might be coming out. Plus, on the way back, my BIL would be stopping for a few days at my Mom and Step Dad’s house. I’d also of course, see my sister who lives in Denver. So… just for driving to Denver, I could tag along out to the east, and I could see ALL of my immediate family in one trip. This was a no brainer. So I left the van at my Dad’s house in Denver and tagged along.

Map of travels

What Northeast Tennessee Seems Like

Lots of serious Christians (I learned that it’s a thing in the southwest to put a Jesus sign in your yard. They are like the signs people put for politicians, but they say “Jesus” or “Thank you Jesus”. In my 35 years of life, I don’t recall ever seeing a sign like that. These kinds of little oddities fascinate me)

Decent place. Most people take pretty good care of their homes and stuff

Lots of young Christian single mothers

Lots of people without a lot of money

Really nice place to go for bike rides

Quite a lot of nice waterfalls

What Northwest N.C. Seems Like

Patchwork of some areas with very serious Christians, and some areas with young/hipster/earthy people (like Asheville), and of course, lots of normal seeming places.

Homes and stuff area little bit nicer than northeast TN

Very humid down at low elevation in the middle of the state.

Also seems like a nice place to bicycle and also has nice waterfalls

People told me there are some areas northwest of Asheville that have small home communities, very outdoorsy people, maybe some communes or something, and generally a lot of people that would probably like me.

Family Stories

Ice Cream!

My nephew really seems to like ice cream. One day, in Asheville, we stopped at a little store and his dad bought him some ice cream. Then as we were walking, we passed an ice cream store and saw a picture of the ice cream they serve – which looked like a large serving. My nephew got disappointed that he’d gotten the small ice cream when there was this bigger better ice cream nearby. He was really pissed off about it for a moment. His Dad and I got a good laugh out of the worst thing happening in this kid’s entire day being that the ice cream he did have wasn’t quite as large as is served somewhere else. After this, we had a sort of “what is your worst first-world problem today?” game with the nephew each day.

We also started a practice of buying ice cream on each day that the temperature outside went over 90 degrees. We had ice cream every day for the rest of the trip.

Nephew and brother in law. The nephew had summer homework books to do. I taught him how to count in sevens to help with his math (and to count in other numbers, forwards and backwards). It took a lot of practice and I’m pretty sure he hated me at the end of it 😀

I’m not an animal!

After my Dad and I initially arrived at the place he rented in Tennessee, I was heading out to the grocery store. My Dad asked what I was going to get. I said “ahhhhh, some vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, some fruit, a chicken, …” he interrupted me saying “I’m not an animal! I don’t want all this vegetable crap. I want some real food! Hamburger, chips, buns, eggs, and bacon.”. I got a big kick out of this because my Dad has a nice garden and really enjoys eating the vegetables from it.

I’m writing this about three weeks after the fact and now I’ve forgotten the other funny family stories.

We went on a couple hikes. It rained like CRAZY on one of them. I mean full on serious rain forrest torrential downpour kind of rain. Some other hiker fell and broke a rib and had to be rescued from the trail.

My nephew is quite good at finding and even sometimes recognizing plants. He found some edible plants when we went to the botanical garden, and a lot of mushrooms on one hike. His dad teaches him this stuff.

Big views like this are hard to come by up in the Appalachians. There are so many trees that you can rarely see far away.

While visiting my Mom and Stepdad, we went fishing one day. As you can clearly see, we are serious champion-level fishermen.

We did all catch at least one fish each, and they were all about this size. I took this picture below in a way to make the fish appear as big as possible, but I think you can still tell it’s not so big. We let them all back in the pond.

Back In Denver

After we got back to Denver, I spent a week or two hanging around the city. I’d taken so many pictures in Utah that it was a lot of work to sort through all of them and edit the better ones. You still haven’t seen all of them. I’m going to take it a bit easier on the pictures for the next month or so. I did so much in Utah that I need a bit of a break from it. I basically just bummed around town, hung out with some women, ate ice cream, and helped my dad fix his tiller. We also had a pizza party. Yeah buddy!

One night, my dad and I watched some UFC fights, and then right after they ended, we heard a weird noise outside. It was his trash can falling over. It was a raccoon! My dad has a sort of ongoing war with raccoons. They come eat his trash often, and a raccoon family tried to move into his attic, which can really mess the place up.

My dad yelled out”Get the .22!” as if I knew where he stores it. His .22 rifle is an antique. I remember shooting it some 20 years ago and it was less powerful than a BB gun. I shot at pop cans and the .22 bullet would bounce off the can rather than going through. I don’t think he fixed it in any in-depth way, so I’m confused about how it works well enough to kill animals now… It does though. He used it to take out the raccoon that moved into his attic. He also has chickens, and raccoons love eating chickens.

So he went and got the gun while I stood outside and looked at the raccoon. It looked back at me for a while and then with no care in the world it started checking out the trash.

Dad came out with the gun, took aim, and BANG! The raccoon growled at us. My dad pumped the gun and said “shit! I need bullets”. He went inside to get some. I heard the raccoon’s little claws on the concrete as he scurried off into the night. The gun doesn’t reload properly so it took a while to reload it and by then the raccoon seemed long gone. We searched for a blood trail or the raccoon and didn’t find a thing. We initially thought he hit it, but now we weren’t so sure. I think that little guy will be back again.

What’s in store for August?

Two of the most common questions asked of people who travel full time are: “How much does it cost?” and “How do you earn an income while traveling?”. In this post, I’ll share my spending details for the first three months of 2017. I’ll continue these updates each quarter. This may help you estimate how much you’d spend living a similar lifestyle. In other future posts, I’ll share more details of how I saved and invested in order to create (what I hope will be) enough lifelong income to fund all my spending.

I want to show you that a lifestyle like mine – full of travel, adventures, living in beautiful places, meeting fascinating new people, and even pursuing hobbies that aren’t exactly inexpensive – can be had for quite little money.

First, some clarifications

I will share a spending update at the end of each quarter.

I track and include every single dollar of spending. These updates are not just the money I spend on travel or my van, it is every dollar I spend.

I’ll share the total of how much I spent, and details of what I spent the money on. I’ll differentiate between spending on what I’ll call “essentials” and “extras”. If you’re thinking about how much you’d need to spend for a certain lifestyle, it’s likely my “essential” spending amounts will be more useful than the “extras”. The lists below show what I include in each category. As you’ll see, there are grey areas, and a lot of what’s in the essentials category is not truly essential. But for the sake on simplicity, this is how I’m categorizing them.

When I sell some hobby equipment, I count it here as negative spending

I have a more or less fixed income of around $1,500 per month. I spent a decade being a good cog in a large manufacturing machine. I invested much of my income and those investments are now the source of my ongoing income. So far, the $1,500 per month seems like more than enough to fund my lifestyle. I’m motivated to spend less than that, but I don’t much desire to spend as little as possible. Many other travelers are in different situations. Some work full time and need a way to find enough income to cover their spending. Some who travel have saved up some money and are spending that cash. Once they run out of money, they’ll go back to work. These last folks have much more motivation to spend as little as possible because it means traveling longer. My income will continue no matter what I’m doing, so I don’t have those reasons to reduce my spending as low as possible. Other people who travel or live in a vehicle full time have told me they spend only $200 per month.

One of the reasons I’m sharing my spending is to help dispel a common misconception people are indoctrinated with from childhood: that spending money makes you happy. For the most part, there is little connection between spending money and happiness or joy. Recent data currently shows that happiness increases as income increases, but only up to $75,000/year, and then it doesn’t really make a difference. Consider for a moment that this data comes from a population indoctrinated that more money means more fun. Much of the money I’m spending is not to “buy happiness”. It’s mostly just to exist as I do. My happiness and joy come primarily from the perspective from which I view things, and secondarily from how much I’m learning/growing and how many fun things I’m doing. Much of my spending on “extras” is to buy things that I will use and many many times. It’s not trading money for one-time happiness or entertainment. It is important to break yourself of the common misconception that spending money = entertainment/happiness. I don’t mean to say that spending money on experiences is wrong for absolutely everyone, but I do think many people spend money this way indiscriminately. I’ll surely rant on this in later posts.

Spending Update – 2017 Q2

For Q1 of 2017, my average monthly spending was $895. This is a little higher than I’d like, but not bad. I spent an average of $813 per month on essentials, and $82 on extras.

My “essentials” spending was higher than normal in June. I paid for 6 months of van insurance ($186), and bought a bunch of new clothes ($376). That clothes spending would fit better in “Extras”, but I’ll just stick to the categories as I set them up.

Spending Vs. Income

The chart below shows how much I spent each month (the red bars) compared to how much income I had (the green bars) and a running total showing the surplus/deficit (the area). This chart starts when I started traveling full time in the van.

Here’s the same chart, but starting the surplus/deficit from scratch at the start of the year:

I’ve saved and will reinvest 40% of my income so far this year. Nearly all the income came from investments. YAYY! I also got a tax refund, because I worked the first half of last year. With that, I’ve saved nearly 60%. While not even working.

Investment changes. More income!

The vast majority of my income is from dividends. I didn’t like my old employer’s 401k investment options, so after retiring, I converted my 401k money to a Traditional IRA. In that IRA, I put the money into a handful of Vanguard funds that pay decent dividends. I’m not a big fan of them, because the dividends vary and seem a bit unpredictable. The yields also aren’t all that great.

In June, I converted some of my Traditional IRA money from VYM (a well-diversified fund of large companies paying moderate dividends) to some REITS: OHI, WPC, and SBRA. These pay much higher dividends.

In my Roth IRA, I had money that I converted from Traditional to Roth earlier this year, plus some more from dividends within the Roth. I bought O (Realty Income Inc.) with that money.

These changes resulted in a $1,900 per year increase in dividend income. I’ll probably convert more of the Vanguard funds into individual stocks over time.

In May I spent some time camping with my brother, found my favorite campsite so far in all of my travels, and played around with the drone and video editing. I went to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, further up the Colorado River, Horseshoe Bend, and Zion National Park. Wow!

MAP OF TRAVELS

I started out the month in Las Vegas. I’d been there to meet up with friends who flew down from Portland. I had a wonderful time with them. I drove from Vegas to Sedona to meet my brother. On the way, I stopped for a night in Flagstaff. That city really has a pull on me. I like it a lot. It’s an awesome place to spend some time during the summer.

SEDONA – WITH MY BROTHER

My brother, Brandon (@thetinglytraveler ), realized he had multiple sclerosis in 2015. He was having a standard successful American life: a stable job that he was very good at and was promoted to manager, a nice house in Denver with a sweet garden, time and money for his hobbies

If I understand correctly, the biggest challenge he had (other than now M.S.) was all the stress at work. He was extremely loyal to his company, and thus ended up having a lot of responsibility and stress there.

After his diagnosis, he changed his life quickly. He Started eating healthier and running, and lost excess weight he’d been carrying for years. He found a wonderful girlfriend. He started thinking about how to reduce his stress at work.

House prices had went up a lot in Denver. Brandon sold his house in Denver and moved in with his girlfriend. Then, they sold her house. They both quit their jobs. They got a truck and a travel trailer. They’ve been traveling around the U.S. the last few months.

They expect to choose an area to buy some land and start a homestead. He’ll probably work more. I expect it will be in a technical role that he enjoys.

I’m proud of my brother, and I’m excited for them.

We crossed paths Sedona and camped together. It was nice camping with them and catching up on their travels so far, trying to give each-other things that we no longer use and don’t need (neither of us were successful at offloading much of anything), comparing ideas of places to travel to, sharing some meals, going on a hike, and so on.

Remember that drone that Dan of Big Ox Little Bird gave me a few months ago? I had a heck of a time getting a charger and batteries for it. I’d gotten the charger after about a month, and one of the batteries I ordered didn’t arrive in Phoenix until after I’d left the city. (The other never did). When my brother passed through Phoenix, he picked it up from me from my cousin before heading north to Sedona. So, I finally got to use the drone. It’s a lot of fun.

This was the first video I recorded with it. I wasn’t even checking the exposure and the sky is all blown out.

We had loose plans to travel together for a while. We weren’t sure how long it would work out, as we have our own sort of speeds of movement, and they would need to go back to Denver fairly soon. We made plans to go up to the Grand Canyon next. I got itchy feet about a day earlier than they did, and headed up there. it was useful for me to go first as I could scope out potential campsites for them. Their trailer doesn’t have a lot of ground clearance, and their dog is scared of other dogs and people. So – I could go check what the roads were like and try to find a campsite that’s a bit secluded from other campers.

The next day, after they ran errands and started heading up, they had trouble with their trailer. Something with the wheel bearings – I believe not having quite enough grease and basically burned up. So they were stuck down a bit south of Flagstaff for a few days.

GRAND CANYON

I camped in the National Forest south of the Canyon. I ended up staying in 3 or 4 different spots. I’d drive over to the canyon each day, and then just go to a different spot. At the spots nearest to Tusayan, there was a lot of low flying helicopters, so I only stayed there one day.

I didn’t really like taking pictures of the canyon. It’s so huge that the other side is all hazy. When shooting with a wide lens, it’s basically all the same and just blends together and looks flat and boring. I did go shoot there during sunrise one morning. I didn’t think I got much of anything, but I did end up with one picture I really like (the first one).

After a few days, there was some cold weather approaching. I didn’t know when my brother would get the trailer fixed and head up, and I wouldn’t be of any help if I went back down there. I wasn’t crazy about the canyon, so I headed off to a really cool campsite that my brother found on Instagram

ALONG THE COLORADO RIVER

This was my favorite campsite of all my travels so far. It’s on some BLM land that goes right up near the edge of the canyon. It’s near the old site of Lee’s Ferry, and it’s quite remote. It’s only like 10 miles from Page as a bird flies, but it’s 50 miles of driving.

I stayed here for about two weeks. I ended up making 3 trips into page. One of those was an extra trip to go buy a 1.5mm hex key. A hundred miles for a $.10 tool.

Why? Well, I was flying the drone a lot, and realized it had a problem. The gimbal was shaking around a lot. With a little research online, I saw it was likely because of a certain set screw not being tight enough. I needed a 1.5mm hex key to tighten it. I have a ton of hex keys in various sizes. I had a 2mm, and I believe a 1mm. But no 1.5. I wanted to fix it while I was still camping out here because it was an awesome place to record drone footage. Tightening the set screw did fix the gimbal vibration issue. So, then I had to re-record all the clips I’d gotten so far.

I have a lot more pictures from here, and an incredible nice drone video, but I’ll save it for a specific post about the spot. Here’s a taste of it:

I was flying my drone a lot and one evening I was sorting through clips and editing them together. The way I had my van parked, the setting sun would shine in through a window and reflect on my computer screen, so I had my curtains up. Those curtains sort of blocked out my view of the sunset.

While editing, I glanced out the front windshield and noticed a bloom of color on the clouds. A brilliant pink.

I jolted out of my seat, grabbed my camera bag and tripod, and scurried over to the edge of this canyon. I only had about 5 minutes before it faded away

PAGE & HORSESHOE BEND

I shot there at 3 different times. Here’s a picture from the first time. Yep, looks just like all the other Horseshoe Bend pictures.

I wasn’t that crazy about this place. The view is nice. There’s just so many people coming in and out and taking the same pictures. It’s sort of a zoo. At one point while I was set up and shooting, an old Asian lady who couldn’t speak english thrusted her camera into my hands and gestured for me to take a lot of pictures at different zoom ranges. I think she was scared to go up to the edge. That was actually kind of nice because she had a Sony a7 and I’d been wondering what it was like to use their electronic viewfinders.

ZION NATIONAL PARK

After a couple weeks near page, I figured I should get on into Utah. I’ve never been to southern Utah, and I’ve been looking forward to it a lot.

I drove back through Page and then to Zion National Park.

I drove through the park – on that road that goes through the south end. WOW! It’s an incredible drive. It’s a continual stretch of amazing views – literally the whole way, other than while inside the two tunnels you go through. The next day I hiked up Angel’s Landing.

I’ll probably have a bunch more pictures to share from Zion. I spent a couple days walking around the canyon and shooting.

PLANS FOR JUNE:

It’s gotten hot, and I’ve left Zion. I’ll come back again at the end of the summer or in the fall. I have a loose idea of where I’ll go next – maybe something like what’s shown below. This whole stretch from Cedar City to Zion looks super remote. The towns on the way are extremely tiny. I haven’t researched actual places, so if you know the area and have any suggestions, please share them!

A common issue for those traveling full time is that when you’re seeing a ton of different places, they can start to fade together in your memory, and you start to have less appreciation for new places and adventures. I’ll write today about why that happens, how it feels, and share some ideas of what one can do about it

VACATIONS FROM WORK – SO SPECIAL!

When I used to work all the time, going on a trip or vacation was a special. In my last few years of work, I traveled a lot for my job. On a few trips, when I went to Flagstaff or southern California for work, I made the weekends before and after the work week into camping trips..

These trips took me to places I’d never been. While driving, I’d often pull off road, get out, and take in the view. I’d daydream about having all my time free to do this stuff much more – to do it all the time. These places – these landscapes – grew to be where my dreams took place.

Those trips had a huge impact. I looked forward to them for a month before they happened. And I’d think about them after, enough to work those places into my daydreams. I’d imagine going back there with my van, retired and able to stop for a week or more. I can still remember many small details of these trips. The campsites, what at I ate, hikes, how I felt, and what I was thinking.

I appreciated these trips tremendously. Because I had time to think about them before and after going, I set the details into my long term memory. Also, I had my early retirement dream (and the actual point when I could retire fast approaching), so these trips were a peek into my future life.

Camping in Colorado with my dad and brother

IMPACT OF FULL TIME TRAVEL ON APPRECIATION

Now, I’m about one year into realizing that dream of retiring and traveling.I’ve been through 10 states and all kinds of wonderful places. Mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, beaches, cities. I’ve enjoyed it a ton. One thing I’ve noticed is that I have grown less likely to feel wonder and amazement.

After about 6 months, I began to notice a couple things. First, that compared to when I went on trips while working, it was now much harder to remember the details of my adventures. Second, I’m not feeling as much wonder, or amazement – or basically appreciation of my travels as on those other trips. This is a common experience among long term travels.

To be clear – I love doing this. I’m having a wonderful time. I just notice sometimes that I’m not appreciating this like I know is possible. I’d say on an appreciation scale of 1-10, I average 6. I think I should be closer to 8. (To be clear, I consider a 6 to be pretty high, and a 9 or 10 would be too high because it would dominate my thoughts and make me act weird)

Hiking with friends in Oregon

WHY THIS HAPPENS:

There are a multitude of reasons for this ‘appreciation challenge’, but I believe the main ones are straightforward:

1 – When I’m moving on from one great place to the next, I don’t spend all the time I used to thinking about them before and after going. Now, It’s just on to the next one.

2 – Since I’m traveling full time with no specific end in sight, I don’t feel I have to go all out to make every day really special. (And I shouldn’t. No amount of trying could make that happen. Real life doesn’t work that way – partly because #3 below)

3 – Hedonic adaptation. I’ve gotten used to spending my days at leisure in beautiful places. It’s now the norm.

A redwood grove in northern California

HOW TO INCREASE APPRECIATION?

Here are things that I’ve been doing, or may start, that help increase appreciation and enjoyment:

1 – Go slower. Stay in one place longer. Leave and come back to your campsite many times (on hikes, bike rides, drives into town for supplies, etc.). Ideally, stay more than 10 days.

2 – Journal about what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. Translating thoughts into words helps clarify or highlight them.

3 – Stay aware of bad feelings. When they happen, don’t fight them. Accept them as they come. Ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. 99.9% of the time, bad feelings are created in your own mind. Mostly they are from responding to an event negatively – and that mental response often does much more damage than the actual event.

4 – Being able to separate yourself from your feelings – to almost look at your emotions as a third party – helps to realize how trivial the bad ones often are, and to recognize when you’re feeling great and why. When you’re upset, ask yourself ”I’ve got all these things going great, and I’m unhappy about THIS?” (in a comedic way rather than judgmentally)

3 – If you take pictures or write about your travels, look back through them regularly. Set those places and days into your long term memory bank.

4 – Regularly think about what you have to be appreciative for. This could initially be forced – like forcing yourself to list 3 things each day. When you develop a habit of it, it works better. (For example, whenever I’m driving any significant distance, it usually crosses my mind how great my van has worked out so far and how amazing it is that I can get something so useful for so little money)

5 – Talk to other people about this stuff. It doesn’t have to be a cheesy “what are you thankful for?” type thing, just reminders here and there of how great many things are.

Do you have other methods to increase your appreciation? What are they?